A funeral has been held for Arnold Stirewalt Gridley, a colorful San Francisco entrepreneur, real estate broker and onetime rice farmer who invented the motorized cable car after buying some retired California Street cars on a whim.

Mr. Gridley, who rubbed elbows with politicians from Frank Jordan to Willie Brown and, relatives said, was full of wild ideas to the end, died of kidney failure May 8 in his Richmond District home. He was 92.

Mr. Gridley was descended from a long line of Gridleys dating to 1630 in Boston; his great-great-grandfather, George Washington Gridley, came to California in the early 19th century and founded the Sacramento Valley town of Gridley. The 350-acre rice farm he started is still in the family.

Mr. Gridley's father, also a San Francisco native named Arnold, owned a bar called "Sloppy Joe's" in what is now known as the Tenderloin. As a young man, Mr. Gridley alternated between rice farming and working behind the bar, honing his considerable gift for gab.

He started Gridley Realty Co. in the 1930s and moved to the Richmond District, where he married his second wife, Elsie, in 1939. She died a decade ago.

"He was as old San Francisco as you can get," said his son Mike Gridley of Mill Valley. "He was a fixture in San Francisco."

But Mr. Gridley was best known for madcap schemes, starting with the time in 1958 when the city put up some of its old California Street cable cars for auction.

"He comes home later on and says, 'I bid on some cable cars, and I got them,' " said his son Mike. " 'Oh God,' we thought. 'What are you going to do with them now?' "

His sons and a mechanic were put to work refurbishing the cable cars. Eventually, they figured out how to take off the metal wheels and replace them with an old truck chassis, and San Francisco's first motorized cable company was in business.

By the time of his death, Mr. Gridley had 60 motorized cable cars, most of which were built from the original cable car blueprints, but 15 of which were originally San Francisco cable cars.

"Whenever you see an old cable car in a movie and notice that, hey, there aren't any cable cars in that location, you know it was my father's cable car, " his son said. "He would always give cable cars to the candidates to use in their campaigns. He gave one to Frank Jordan. He gave one to Willie Brown. He saw himself as the preserver of the heritage of the cable cars."

He donated cable cars to the 49ers to use in their Super Bowl championship parades.

But Mr. Gridley's interest in San Francisco heritage did not stop with cable cars. He bought two historic ferryboats, the Fresno and the San Leandro, after they stopped plying bay waters, starting Gridley's Historical Ferry Boats Co. in an effort to preserve them.

"His vision was to turn the boats into offices, but it never got to that point," his son explained. "We had a lot of parties on one of them, and he began to build a structure, but a fire in 1972 or 1973 burned it down to the deck."

Both boats are now in dry dock in Vallejo, waiting for a decision on what to do with them.

Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown was at Mr. Gridley's funeral Thursday, and when somebody mentioned that Mr. Gridley was "colorful," Brown said, "Oh no, he was way more than colorful."

So it was fitting when his casket was taken to the Fernwood Cemetery, in Mill Valley, it was in the lead car of a procession of motorized cable cars.

"He went out in the appropriate style in one of the cable cars he built," said his son.

In addition to his son Michael, Mr. Gridley is survived by sons Arnold Gridley Jr. of Pacifica, Robert Gridley of Lexington, Ky., and Phillip Wright of Windsor; daughters Christine Bennett of Hayward, Patricia Gridley of Brentwood and Louella Benson of Santa Rosa; 17 grandchildren and 17 great- grandchildren.

Donations may be made in his memory to St. Anne's Home, 300 Lake St., San Francisco, CA 94118, or to St. Anne's Church Building Fund, 850 Judah St., San Francisco, CA 94118.